You
quickly pick up on a few tidbits of highly personal information while
listening to Smile Empty Soul: Singer Sean Danielsen’s dad is a loser,
his mom lives in continual fear, and hypocrisy rules the religious
world with an iron fist. Other than that, though, everything’s just
hunky-dory in Danielsen’s life. But despite such rampant lyrical
negativity, it’s hard not to feel empathy for Danielsen’s sorry soul.
Over an overwhelmingly minor chord-filled album of hard rock,
Danielsen’s raspy voice howls at the world in much the same convincing
way Kurt Cobain used to do back with Nirvana. And while Danielsen may
still be a few steps less poetic than Cobain, he’s nevertheless an
effective communicator and well worth checking out.

Just when you’re about to write Smile Empty Soul off as yet one more
new band of alternative rock whiners, they throw the plot curve of “The
Other Side” at you. The song begins predictably as a rant about
Danielsen’s troubled family, with lines like, “Can’t this family have
one day to get away from all the pain?” All the while, the only bright
spot in Danielsen’s world is the light that he sees shining from his
next-door-neighbor’s window. But Danielsen’s happy-family-envy is soon
severely shattered. Toward the end of the song, he tells of how the
“neighbor boy runs up me, his eyes all black and blue” after being
brutally beaten by his father. Danielsen then concludes that “maybe
it’s not so good on the other side.” Danielsen’s ability to see that he
is not the only one suffering in this world is refreshing indeed.

Although one song title, “Therapy,” sums up this album’s introverted
direction best, Danielsen and band also find room to look at the bigger
picture as well. An example of this wider scope vision can be heard on
“This Is War,” which is a song that was obviously inspired by the
United States’ recent military endeavors in the Middle East. The track
is underpinned by an unobtrusive string arrangement, and finds the
vocalist wondering aloud why it’s okay to just blow somebody’s head off
during wartime, yet flat-out murder anytime else. Sure, this is an
age-old moral question, yet it’s eloquently expressed here.

Smile Empty Soul isn’t saying or playing too much here that we haven’t
already heard before. But while far too many bands come off looking
conspicuously trendy with all their outward artistic suffering these
days, Danielsen and company are utterly believable.